Aware

 It's a twitch emoji.

I just came out of a few weeks of working late and some weekend time taken away. It was not fun. Now I feel drained and dissatisfied in my leisure time, though part of it I think is the unreliability of being able to play with people I know and like. I stream-of-conscious-ed into writing a byline like at the end of an email, perhaps a sign of how much I got used to work. I recognize that at the moment, I am feeling lonesome, but also "inefficient" with my leisure, but that's coming from I think getting "used to" having very little of it over the past few days + Friday + no coffee tomorrow + looming long flight + missing watching Beef with Chris because she went out + not really knowing when she's coming back - kind of scary sometimes not living in Singapore, I kind of fear for her safety coming back late. I'm fearful too of the future, if we have to be here.

I wonder why I fear long flights, or dread them. Instead of being excited to go back. I suppose part of it is just the jet lag - I don't like how much time just flows through in a fugue, jet lagged state. And this 1 week stint is odd for sure, as soon as I get over the jet lag, I'm probably going to come back and get another round of jet lag. 

I know I fear for her safety, because I'm relieved when she comes back. But that fear comes from imaginary scenarios in my head.

I think I'm getting kind of tired of games when there's no new patch. I should be getting back on my longer-term goals, or just continue the optimizing and settling down of my life in SF, but I always feel like they need to happen during the day, and I'm tired by the end of it. Maybe it's the lack of reward at the end of doing those things.

I think lately I've been "waiting" for energy to come, and somehow have lost the initiative. I get productive days and not productive days, and longer and shorter breaks, and yet mostly I do the same thing, with some increase in pay. I suppose that's kind of too min-max a way of thinking - I'm also building slowly my relationship with Chris, findings new friends in SF, and it's not yet a year (though almost). I feel for some of the folks Dr. K talked to, and can relate to some of their struggles. I like that there is a constant reminder that knowing information is different from understanding something, in your brain, and psyche.

I think I am getting better at being at peace letting go of the time we had a fight of sorts in Florida. Now I guess I have to deal with feeling guilty at times for not spending time with her, however unfortunate the timing. I'm getting way tired now, and going to bed. I hope all is well, that is after all all we can do.

I haven't had time to/inspiration to blog in a while, but I feel a strong feeling for it in specific settings, like late at night, after being alone for  a bit, maybe after doing a lot of work. Maybe I feel like "nobody understands", or a kind of weird meta-awareness of myself whenever it's one of those times. I feel like I need to go to sleep, as a distraction, but also feel a weird sunk cost fallacy of wanting to stay up now to see Chris get home. Idk maybe her phone died, which seems to happen often. 

Dr. K

Been watching (binging) his streams/VODs a bunch, the interviews with streamers mostly and decided to write down thoughts if I remembered them.

I like this stuff:
1. how to disarm and humanize your teammates in online games

2. the neuroscience behind technology, esp. dopamine and adenesine(?)

3. what is burnout?

4. understanding ADHD, the vata mind, and procrastination

5. that I need/want to hear this more

6. "western medicine focuses on conclusions on averages"

7. Awareness and experiencing the thoughts and emotions

8. for the first time in history, more people in some places might be dying from obesity than starvation

9. Relationship stream with Mrs. K

10. some try-able stuff like 

11. more soon!

Why am I bothered?

Sometimes, I'm bothered, and it's hard to talk about it with Chris as I'm not sure how I would word it non-abstractly, and I sense a tension when I talk about relationship things with her. I am in constant fear she would take it the wrong way or in a negative light. Maybe I lack trust about how much she trusts the core strength of us. Like I'm not sure if she has truly inherited that any issues are for us to work together on, and not meant to be blamed on anyone in particular. Maybe I've been tanking for too long. I will talk to her about it.

Potential Difference

Imagine needing internet space to meditate and process emotions, this post was brought to you by Buddhist gang.

I am concerned about how we would raise our kids, though when I meditate on the differences, they may turn out minor.

Writing

I found this in draft mode still from May 2021, I'm just publishing it yolo style now without reading to check if it's fine. 

"Writing is easy. All you have to do is to cross out the wrong words." - Mark Twain

The quote I actually learned through Civ 6.

---

I've been meaning to write. In my so-far fairly stable period of thoughts and life, the contentment that pseudo-Buddhist philosophy has brought has been laid bare at times when I've felt provoked and quick to anger. I wrote down the topics which have done this. And I finally feel compelled to write.

I suggested Joseph try it to, though I don't know if he'll take it up. Maybe it is only for some people. He has had his own thoughts, and I think they are worth writing down for himself.

There are certain things that I'm afraid of, and they are unconventional. I feel the fear that maybe someone else from a less wealthy family may fear, and maybe it is a fear that is tied to the same philosophy. I think sometimes that maybe my father feared this too, and for the most part chose to ignore it. These are all I think, interrelated fears, but since I've listed them down on my phone separately I'll also write about them separately.

-- 

Fear 1: Thriftiness and Credit scores

All children eventually grow up to understand that their parents are flawed human beings as well.

I grew up taught by my mother to be cheapskate about many many things. In fact, I think I felt (note that in truth I don't even know if it mattered to her) like she was proud of me for spending the least amongst my brothers and living frugally. Till this day, variants of my spending habits translate comfortably to also being generally less wasteful and more eco-friendly. But the truth is I expend a lot of energy into things that probably do not translate, in real dollars, to as much savings as if I cared about "bigger" picture things like how I handle my personal finances or take advantage of deals. I am aware of my own stubbornness. And in fact in writing this I've come to realize what I've learned from my mother basically are all the things that also coincide with two virtues I value which are to live simply and to be at less wasteful, while passing up all the "auntie" street smart things like getting onto as many credit cards as she does, and opening up accounts in many places to get as many discounts and what not. She clearly does both, and for some reason I value one and disdain the other. Maybe these traits are a marriage of my mother's saving habits, and fathers' simple living. It's time I get on a credit card.

Fear 2: Immigration

I've also worded this to Christelle once. I think that I fear a lot of opportunities presented to me because I assume they are not for me, or because I'm unsure if I will lose something in translation. It may not be easy for someone to understand, especially because I speak great English, but there is a primeval fear associated with disassociating from your culture. It is maybe the same fear you might expect a first generation college student would experience, because the young person has to lean their way into the dark, without parental experience. That feeling can be generalized to immigrants that may not be able to rely upon an established community presence like mine. I feel neither here nor there, a common occurrence I'm aware, and fear I'm equipped neither here nor there with the intuition to navigate new situations. It is almost a curse that I manage such a natural American accent, because it arms others around me with expectations of me, outside their control. Yet it might also be my fear of being patronized that I know absolutely nothing, or weird stereotypes of foreigners I'm trying to avoid, that keeps me from seeking help with simple "I'm not from here" statements. It's time I wilt the pride.

Fear 3: Finance

The excuse I've given myself for a time being is... yet I also know there are some unresolved tensions between what I know to be "good for me" and what I value personally as powerful motivators.

Fear 4: Future

In Coach Carter, one of the basketball players recites a poem that it is not our inadequacy that we fear but the opposite, of our own capability. Though I don't recall exactly the lines and could be misinterpreting entirely (especially as it later goes on to talk about how we should let our own lights shine to inspire others to do so as well), that line could read something about fearing we will not achieve our full potential. It certainly scares me. At this point I'm infatuated with being perfectly mediocre (knowing fully that on average in society I am doing well), but knowing it is possible for me, given life circumstances, to achieve more. Of course, there are all the sort of speculation that one never truly knows, which is why I always aim to do "slightly above average". I know that if I buckle down and stress about it now, I can set my own path. I also know I can be happy in many circumstances and don't need to stress about trying too hard. But it has often left me at an impasse between trying hard and not trying too hard.

Fear 5: My family, culture, and Christelle

Recently I reacted negatively to Chris's enthusiastic offer of help to my elder brother. This would not be the first time I react strongly and badly to Chris's enthusiasm for some subject. It's about time I sat down to really think about what that's all about. On the surface, I can honestly say it is cynical distrust. There's no way around it and no point in being euphemistic. What are the root causes and are they rational? Can I change or compromise? I can't help but remember the "curse" my history teacher Mr. Khoo told the class he was bestowing, and the irony that I probably have not strongly questioned his wisdom which is to question things. It's a simple precept which is the opposite of the presumption of innocence, which is not to commit to believing until evidence is provided. But I know aside from that I  know most people base their suspicions on their culture and personal experience. It's simply intuition whether right or wrong, personally justified. So when Chris shares her personal family stories with me, I believe them in my head, but I have not accepted them in my heart. This is obviously extremely hurtful to anybody who is sharing a personal story only to be disbelieved. But in my heart, it's simply principle and again, culture and personal experience. I do not come from a family with such a fantastical background. My family were simply immigrants - sure, my grandparents were fleeing the cultural revolution in part, but so have many others - worked largely within the system, and are for the most part, ethnically Chinese. Chris, and here maybe comes some partly American interest in genealogy, or maybe it was just my parents who simply don't find it imperative to share, has English nobility in his ancestry. And not just - she also has indigenous ancestry. I have never met anyone with this kind of background - or else they have never shared - so the matter-of-fact way she talks about it makes it even more incredulous - does she even know how rare and uncommon this is? Or maybe it is not uncommon in the US (for example, some of the slave-owning founding fathers, who likely sexually assaulted their slaves, have large family trees over the generations), or maybe I am unaware of how uncommon it is? Another piece of personal background, perhaps even more contentious was about a mural and painting that her family owned, stolen out of war and with incredible injustice, claimed by someone else as theirs. Perhaps I should not be surprised - injustice like this is apparently well documented in the US, however incredible it may seem today, and still occurs, though maybe more blatantly in the past. But then my history lessons (with Mr. Khoo) kicked in, and it tells me that I should not trust sources that could be biased.

An aside - there is another area in which I am to relax what I try to apply as standard skepticism across the board that I think I have yet to truly grasp intuitively, which is that we should always trust sexual assault victims. At first this was hard (because why should we believe someone without knowing the full story or evidence?) but in actuality the bias is against them, and so on the flipside this made it easier to accept this tenet (because the fact that they are claiming this, when there is bias against them not to do so societally, makes it more likely it is true).

So is it the same case here? I am not sure. Maybe from experience, Chris has never found it difficult to get people to believe her, or maybe it's the opposite and it's because she trusts me - making my skepticism more disgraceful. The fundamental problem is that it conflicts with one of my values - which is to treat everyone equally, even my SO. This means if a stranger or acquaintance were to tell me the same thing - I would not immediately believe them either. Yet I think she expects me to - because I'm her boyfriend? Or because she thinks it's normal for people to trust immediately? What is an average level of skepticism in America? Is it different from Singaporeans?

Here comes the more irrational parts. Part of my distrust comes from behavior I tend to associate with people who should be distrusted - but are they really correlated? For example, Chris likes to talk about her dreams. That's fine - but sometimes I get a sense that she believes they have some greater meaning (the latest science gives a pretty clear no) - or is it that she just finds them fascinating? Maybe it is me that just finds them not fascinating because they are so random and ultimately meaningless? To be fair, Chris finds many things meaningful where I do not (and vice versa sometimes), and I feel like I am disappointing or a mood-killer when I do not share the same enthusiasm. In fact it is a skill I think I should learn - which is to find joy and fascination in many many more things - which seems to come naturally to her. My mind on the other hand has been acclimatized to optimize and remove distractions - and things that she finds interesting, I sometimes find distracting from bigger picture things. So comes my own cognitive dissonance - I respect and admire valuing simply things, and am beginning to disdain "big picture" type people - yet I don't do it myself! Fuck me. Another thing I'm uncertain on is Chris's generally disorganization in some areas, and complete organization in others. I think some article said this was a sign of very smart people - hmm. Chris "gives me the impression" of someone who believes everything on the internet - but this is certainly and patently untrue. In fact she has probably whipped my own intellectual laziness quite a bit in terms of fact checking. One area in which I find difficulty is that she likes talking about news that are essentially still rumors - and she knows this, so why talk about it? - is what I find hard to understand. Maybe it's because I have given up myself - I don't like "following" news until they are certain, I think it's clickbait.

So back to the impetus for this section of the post - my reaction to her wanting to help my brother. This subject might be one of the grayer ones too. It's about culture. Essentially Chris sometimes gives me the impression that she doesn't understand, doesn't get, or doesn't care that I'm foreign - and this is not a bad thing, generally speaking! For one, I am familiar enough with American culture and perform my own automatic-translations (literally, in the case of Fahrenheit to Celsius). 

One common stereotyping of Americans that Europeans and Asians share afaik is that Americans often fail to see how "American" they are, or that they presume certain commonalities across cultures that are simply false. This can be very irritating to foreigners, in foreign places, though obviously that's not unreasonable in the US aside from stressing immigrants out sometimes. To be fair, for Americans it might be both easy and difficult to understand or perceive these differences. Then comes a problem that is probably universal - people mistake what are individual characteristics as cultural phenomenon. Surely I am guilty of this. For one, I've come to the realization, too late at times, that when I talk to my elder brother, the discussion we have or jokes we make kind of exists in its own culture and understanding that does not translate, at least for my brother, to his other interactions. I guess I just assumed I was always talking to the same and true person - I was, but that wasn't the whole picture. Unlike me (or perhaps just like me), he keeps his mannerisms separate. Why is this relevant? Because we often make fun of Americans or other non-Singaporean places for various reasons. And so when Chris offered to talk to him directly, I was afraid some of her mannerisms would not be taken or understood well by my brother, who has not had the same experience as me in the US. But on introspection I realize this is not true, and that he may very well be keeping the jokes between us or perhaps he healthily chooses to keep an open mind anyway even if he has some underlying prejudices.

Where content ends

She finally replied, essentially asking for space. I guess at least I'm not tone deaf to the point that I can't tell. It really reminds me of the time I upset my sister in law. I'm at a loss... I've been known to be callous, and always I've scaled back, but not in a very refined way. This one hurts so much because I know it's my fault, just like all the other times I've hurt other people... And all those other times I took responsibility too, and I really did try to change, but it still eludes me, I go back like a drunk to the bottle. I don't understand people, or I'm narcissistic. I envy other people to which it comes easily, but I'm wondering if it was a trade off somewhere. Maybe they experienced some pain in the same way. I read a reddit post saying people who think they're sociopaths because they lack empathy are actually attention seeking losers, literally after this morning when I posted my thoughts on it. I hope she gives me another chance, but even when she does, I wouldn't know what to do. I'll have to ask and hope she doesn't give me the cold shoulder. I don't know who else to ask, if I'm completely honest. I don't have a close confidant that could help me in this regard, especially. I don't know how to be gentle, or worse, I don't understand why I need to be, naturally. I'm wondering how all the callous comedians get by, or are those simply acts.

I'm wondering too, the irony that sticking to this pseudo-Buddhist mentality has actually done the opposite for me, in that I've lost the ability to introspect because I'm so blissful in the moment at times. Or is it age, that I've gone through the phase of. I really don't know.

Who are my confidants and good friends? I would surely point to my Singaporean friends. Maybe I should talk to them. I'm feeling sick and out of it. I know I love her because it hurts.

Thinking about thinking

I woke up today thinking. It's been a long while, I think. I thought about how I've been being lately, toward Chris especially. I'm not a very empathetic person, and even till now I don't quite get the fine line between platitude and genuineness. Since I was 9 I've asked myself the question in some form or another of whether I'm a literal sociopath. That day, I was watching the news about the Iraq War, and I felt very little about it. I wondered if I was supposed to feel sad or bad about war so far away, truly. And I wondered if people generally feel that way too. Since then I've felt "compelled" by duty and morals to do "good", but often I'm not sure if that's just a pride-based substitute for real emotions. Maybe this is why Amos is such a compelling character to me. I'm scared.

But mostly I woke up thinking because Chris has not replied to a long set of messages yesterday from me that ended in an apology for an issue I was not sure she actually cares about. This has happened several times now and it always makes me anxious. Sometimes she keeps her feelings and thoughts to herself and this scares me. Is it none of my business when it involves me? Is this the age old stereotype that boys are clueless and are simply dumbstruck when things come to fore? Or is it actually in my head blowing things out of proportion? Or even more ironic, is it that acknowledgement of the situation brings about the situation (i.e. drama creates itself)? It goes back to something much fundamental for me. I consider myself very direct and still prefer, very very much, that people be direct. It makes things simple for people like me who have difficulty understanding subtleties and emotions, which apparently loads of people "just get". I've thought rationally about it (maybe my original sin when responding to issues), and in the grand scheme of things we'll work it out and carry on. Though I can't shake the paranoia that it blows up into something terrible...

Maybe I'll continue this later, but I actually need to work... Mid-season final thoughts before I forget. I've grown more  now and I know you can't expect people to be direct if you yourself are selfish and lazy and not do your best to create the conditions that make people feel comfortable being direct. But I've now known a good solution till this day of how to go about doing that. I'm on the verge of tears and maybe I should ask.